Quick VeeKay thwarted by unfavourable cautions at Nashville
Rinus ‘VeeKay’ van Kalmthout was at his best once again in the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix at Nashville Superspeedway, the final race of the 2024 NTT IndyCar Series. Unfortunately for the driver who turned 24 this week, the race did not go his way, leaving him to finish 12th.
VeeKay has been carried by wings in the second half of this season. The Ed Carpenter Racing driver had been in a rough spot for some 18 months, as the four top teams in IndyCar racing made significant steps forward, leaving the rest of the field to settle for finishes outside the top ten and even outside the top 15. Despite these increased difficulties, VeeKay made a particularly strong start to 2024, finishing eighth on the streets of St Petersburg.
The spring proved more challenging, though, as apart from a third place at Thermal and seventh on the grid of the Indianapolis 500, a race that VeeKay finished in ninth, the Dutch ECR driver worked hard to lift his team back up to the midfield positions where ECR had lingered a few years earlier. Then an upward trend began at the Iowa Speedway and it never let up.
In the last eight races of the year, VeeKay consistently managed to finish in the top-15, IndyCar racing’s top half, as starting fields tend to swell towards the 30 mark. Fifth at Iowa was the highlight, followed by seventh at Milwaukee, eighth in the chaos of Toronto, another ninth in the second Iowa race and tenth at the Gateway short oval. At Portland, VeeKay finished just off the top ten with an 11th place, and on Sunday in Nashville the 24-year-old Dutchman added a 12th place.
On the face of it, this was a fine performance, apart from the fact that VeeKay definitely had the pace for more. However, the ECR driver fell into the caution trap twice, as right after VeeKay’s first and third pitstops respectively, yellow flags were waved to indicate a full-course yellow. Some of VeeKay’s rivals were handed a ‘free pitstop’ and as a result sneaked ahead of their Dutch opponent.
However, VeeKay excelled with a double overtaking move on Marcus Armstrong and Linus Lundqvist, and a similar move that saw him overtake Armstrong and champion Alex Palou again shortly after his first pitstop. In the closing stages you could almost hear the trackside fans praying for the race to be neutralised again – as a longer yellow would certainly have handed VeeKay a top-ten finish – but it was not to be. With four laps to go, VeeKay was forced to commit to a ‘splash-and-dash’ in order to finish the race. Then the attacking Dutchman outpaced Jack Harvey on the final lap to take P12.
Thanks to his final string of results, VeeKay finished 13th in the IndyCar standings, 12 points behind Christian Lundgaard and six ahead of Felix Rosenqvist. Behind the Dutch ECR driver in the standings were Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson, former Formula 1 driver Romain Grosjean and IndyCar veteran Graham Rahal. The championship was won by Palou, who proved to be the best for the third time in four seasons.
“A good race for us,” said VeeKay after the final round of the 2024 IndyCar season. “P12 was the best we could do with our strategy. There was nothing wrong with the strategy, we were just unlucky with the timing of the two cautions. If the yellows had come out a few laps earlier, I would have been able to take advantage of those ‘free’ pitstops. If I have learnt anything over the past five IndyCar seasons, it’s that you can’t control what you can’t control.”
“Looking back on the season as a whole, this has probably been my best IndyCar season so far. We struggled in the early part of the year and had a couple of tough mechanical failures, but from Iowa things really took off. Seven top-ten finishes in a very competitive field like this is a very good number. I could do with more of the second half of the 2024 season.”
“After a busy schedule of 18 races in six months I can now relax and recover. It’s time for family and friends, but also time to make a decision for next year. One thing is for sure, I think IndyCar is a great series and I would love to compete in it for many years to come. At the moment, I can’t say with which team, but when the time comes I’ll let you know,” VeeKay concluded.
The 2024 NTT IndyCar Series season is now over. Rinus ‘VeeKay’ van Kalmthout will return in 2025, although it’s unknown for which team. An announcement will be made at a later date. The next IndyCar season will traditionally begin on Sunday, 2 March 2025, with a race on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida.